PubliCare – ‘PuMa’
A new social intranet for more than 500 employees that maps all management systems in one tool, promotes communication within the company and offers everyone the opportunity to easily share work results, successes and experiences with the company.
Who is PubliCare?
PubliCare is a homecare company with over 500 employees. They look after 35,000 to 40,000 customers in the medical field, providing advice and supplying them with medical aids. PubliCare is particularly active in the areas of artificial bowel outlet, continence and wounds and is currently also developing the area of clinical nutrition.
Manfred Höffken from PubliCare in an interview with us
Why were they looking for a new intranet solution?
As part of its quality management, PubliCare was looking for a tool that would allow the company to map not only its quality management system, but also all of its management systems. This includes project management, for example, but also system, IT and data protection management. PubliCare looked at various solutions and finally landed on Atlassian Confluence and thus Seibert. Linchpin supports PubliCare in making access to the systems much easier. All common and necessary tools can be integrated via the Launchpad and accessed quickly if required. The same applies to navigation menus, which can be customized.
What were the requirements for the new intranet?
The core requirement was to map the various management systems. PubliCare wanted to map the quality management system and the project management system in a common tool. This tool should also promote communication. The aim was to give every department, every team and every project the opportunity to share work results and successes with the company in a simple way. With Linchpin, PubliCare has found exactly the right tool to meet these requirements. On the one hand, it offers the wiki system, which covers knowledge management in the company, and on the other hand, Linchpin promotes communication with blog entries and news.
What are the strengths of Linchpin?
For PubliCare, the strengths clearly lie in accessibility and the promotion of transparency. Linchpin offers a wiki system in which rights can be set so that colleagues can not only have read rights but also write rights. This encourages active exchange and content can be created by the employees themselves to fill the system with life. The pleasant way in which PubliCare communicates is also one of Linchpin’s strengths. Above all, this includes the distribution of knowledge, information and news within the company – for example via the news function.
Wir haben ein sehr freundschaftliches Miteinander und ich finde der Microblog ist dafür ideal, um das dann auch entsprechend in so ein Social Intranet zu tragen. Dass man halt eben nicht nur trockene Arbeitsanweisungen oder irgendwelche Projektpläne teilt, sondern, dass man halt auch solche Dinge teilt wie Grillfeste oder […] wie der Geschäftsführer mit unserem Außendienst unterwegs war und dann ein schönes Foto von ihm in OP-Kluft macht. All das sind halt so Sachen, die man normalerweise im Intranet nicht finden würde, aber der Microblog ist genau der perfekte Platz dafür, um auch solche informellen Sachen zu teilen und dafür zu sorgen, dass auch so ein bisschen Menschlichkeit einzieht.
How did the go-live of the new system go?
To begin with, the company asked the departments and teams who they considered to be particularly capable of acquiring knowledge on this topic and then passing it on to colleagues. The employees received appropriate central training and then ensured that this knowledge was passed on to the departments and teams. This also gave rise to the role of “PuMa managers”, who are responsible for actively pursuing the topic within their team and maintaining their own areas in the Linchpin system. During the go-live, it was also important to secure the support of the management from the outset. They ensured that the information was explicitly distributed via the Linchpin system and at the same time dispensed with parallel communication via email. This meant that employees had to use the system if they wanted to access certain information.
How was the system received?
The feedback was positive overall. Users are enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by the tool. The quality of the content has also increased. As a result, everyone in the company is better informed and traditional information channels (such as emails from superiors or team meetings) are a thing of the past. Information now comes directly from the source where it originates: namely from the departments and from the projects themselves. Suddenly, it was possible to access a lot of information that was previously difficult to access. For PubliCare employees, the microblog (which was very well received by the staff, by the way) is also a very simple, low-threshold way to actively participate in the system. After all, content can be created without having to worry about creating pages, assigning them to sections and observing the hierarchical structure.
